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Saturday, January 14, 2012

Physical and mental distractions are stunting the growth of your freelance business. In line with getting focused on my writing career for 2012, I’ve vowed to cut out as many distractions as possible, at the computer and beyond.

Here are eight strategies to get your business in a distraction-free zone!

I know, I know. What? No Facebook? Yeah, exactly, just like it was 2003. If you’re serious about getting focused on your business and you’re not using Facebook for business, deactivate and switch to building your network on LinkedIn. You’ll no longer be tempted to wander off into Facebook Land the next time you’re at your computer. Best of all, you won’t have that constant nagging feeling of checking your messages or updating your status. Restore your focus (and maybe your privacy).

If you are using Facebook for business, only you can decide what is ‘enough’ time spent on this social media site for marketing, promoting your product or service. However, you should be cautious that your mind is not constantly wandering off to Facebook when you should be concentrating on something else – it’s the social media trap, if you’re not careful, you’ll get sucked in.
In the pursuit of learning all you can about building a business, being successful and making money you’ve probably subscribed to a ton of newsletters and blogs.

Here’s the deal, if you haven’t benefited from these inbox fillers, unsubscribe. Sean Platt of Ghostwriter Dad puts it in perspective:

Look for those voices that have accomplished things similar to what you would like to accomplish, then get rid of anything you could categorize as online clutter.

How often do you open your inbox to find a plethora of emails? It’s overwhelming and time consuming.

Keep your subscriptions to a bare, essential minimum. Let’s not hoard information, especially information that is just cluttering our minds and focus.
If you haven’t benefited from it in the past 6 months of subscription, it’s time to toss it out, only keep the voices that really matter and as Sean Platt advises, “Narrow the number of voices you listen to. It is really, really easy to get lost. There is an abundance of information and so much of it is appealing because it is free.”

This is a free, downloadable timer you can use to set yourself a block of time for concentration. You’re committed to 25 minutes of work based on the Pomodoro Technique. Once the timer rings, and your 25 minutes are up, you can step away from the computer and take a break.
This is a mental practice and you have to build your discipline to stay focused for those 25 minutes devoted to work. The app doesn’t close browsers or documents, and will give you a buzz once the 25 minutes are complete. It’s available as a free download.

No, really, Concentrate is an app for Mac users to switch between one task and another – offering complete focus on a single task. For instance, you create the category ‘writing’. You then customize particular actions you want to happen when you are concentrating, such as blocking social media sites, chat, and quit apps.

You’ll also customize what you want to happen when concentrating, such as a ‘growl’ sound to remind you not to daydream, open apps and docs associated with the task. As soon as you press the ‘concentrate’ button, everything goes into effect and you’re ready to unleash your freelance genius. Create as many categories as you want.

This app will allow you to switch between tasks without manually having to open and close apps/browsers. There is a download fee of $29.

There’s a lot going on during the day in my household. The phone rings, children need to get picked up and dropped off, and the same children need to be fed (or they’ll get cranky). As I am the CEO of My Household, getting an office space outside of home is not feasible at the moment. Instead, I wait for the world to fall asleep (or at least that’s what it feels like) and try to work my creative juices.
We’re smart people and we know that being a freelancer is really, extraordinarily hard work. This is especially true when you’re trying to launch your business and gain momentum. This is the time to get through the tough spots and keep going.

When I’m tempted to hit the snooze button during the insane morning hours, I remind myself that someone else’s alarm went off and they’ll be getting up. This usually helps me fight the cozy bed syndrome. Find the motivating thought that gets you out of bed each morning, or keeps you up at night and hold on to it as if your business depended on it – because it does.

You’ve spent all this time learning and soaking up what the ‘gurus’ are saying in your industry. Once you have the basics down, you have to believe you know enough. Now is the time to implement.
What you haven’t learned through reading, you’ll learn through trial and error. After all, experts usually get their expertise through the field. They learn from their mistakes, they track their mistakes and they start seeing what works. Repeat often until you’ve created your own recipe for success.
Your strategy is different than mine, and my strategy is different from the next person and that’s ok.
If you’ve doubted your freelance business, I encourage you to visit a local job fair in your area. Watch as the disappoint grows on the faces of the job seekers who came hopeful only to find most positions were 100% sales commission. It’s a reality check any freelancer can benefit from.
In the 2012 Writer’s Market, they provide a writing calendar. Each month has a goal to meet, or a reminder. December’s tidbit is: Evaluate your 2011 accomplishments and make 2012 goals. January: Make 2012 your best year freelancing yet! February: Use the extra day in February to submit your writing.

You get the drift. Set monthly goals (supplemented by weekly goals) for your freelance business. Before you know it, you’ll be evaluating your 2012 accomplishments, make sure you’re able to face yourself knowing you’ve done all you can to make your freelance business a success.
Let us know how you plan to make 2012 the year your freelance business takes flight.

I really like the 60-Second Solutions videos on Entrepreneur.com. I thought that the recent video by communications coach Carmine Gallo on creating a 60 second strategy to tell your story was especially useful.

Sometimes it’s hard to explain to people what it is you really do. Many people hear the word ‘freelancer’ and don’t quite understand what it means, other than you probably work from home in your pajamas.

Gallo suggests you come up with one sentence answers to the following four questions to keep your “What I Do” story to 60 seconds.

Are you a graphic designer? A freelancer writer or photographer? Do you have a niche or topic (like small business, agriculture, health) that you concentrate on? Turn this into one sentence. Example: I am a freelance blogger and I write about small business financing for several online magazines.
If you don’t solve a problem…then why do you exist? Maybe you are a wedding photographer and work with couples to capture their big day. Maybe you have an MBA and share small business advice for newspapers and websites. Maybe you create logos to help companies better brand themselves. Whatever you do—put it in the context of how your services solve a problem. Example:

I help small businesses create and implement a social media marketing plan.

Competition is everywhere, and you need to know what makes you better than the next guy that does the same thing you do. Why do you prefer to shop at Home Depot rather than Lowes? Target rather than Walmart? Pat’s Pizza rather than Jason’s Pizza?

Is their customer service better? Prices better? Does their pizza delivery guy show up faster? Use your talents and experience to tout yourself. Example:

I have an MFA in graphic design and stay up to date with the latest trends and technology by attending professional development workshops twice a year.

Tell people how you are going to make their life easier. Maybe you are a whiz at creating compelling websites and will take the time to teach your clients how to manage them on their own. Maybe you have contacts in the media and can help promote your clients news and events effectively through press releases and social media marketing. Maybe you know of a way to help your client’s business run more efficiently, saving them money in the long run. Example:

I have a database of media contacts throughout the state and can help you promote your annual fundraiser by creating press releases and writing stories for the local newspapers.

Once you get these sentences down, practice them in front of a mirror. Then head out to a networking event and try them out. Someone might not ask you all four questions at the same time, but it’s still good to have a response ready and waiting.

By keeping your answers to one sentence, you keep from rambling on about yourself. Being succinct shows that you really know your business and are comfortable and confident talking about whatever it is that you have built your freelancing career on doing. Don’t be afraid to ask other people the same four questions—see if their responses are as good as yours!

Mozilla Firefox is a real treasure for freelancers worldwide. Why? It’s an advanced, fast and secure web browser.
In the last 7 years the open source browser has proved – it’s more than a web surfer. Mozilla Firefox is translated into over 70 languages, enriched with dozens of extensions, and beautified by many persona designs.

Firefox may be modified according to your needs on the fly. With a couple of useful add-ons the browser turns into your developer, designer, or SEO fellow-worker. Today, we continue our top Firefox extensions topic with a roundup of excellent free Firefox addons. These extensions will improve your productivity and level up your freelancing performance.

ReminderFox: ReminderFox is all you need to keep your freelance project time frame on target. The add-on helps to create to-do lists, set alerts, make notifications. You can specify time and date of your reminders. Thus, you will stay organized and goal-oriented with this tiny Firefox add-on.

Xmarks Sync:Xmarks Sync is a free back-up add-on. The tool saves tabs, browsing history, bookmarks and passwords before closing Firefox. Moreover, it lets you create an account and sync all your Firefox information so you may use it on another computer or restore it if your PC crashes. Xmarks Sync emphasizes that your freelance performance will not suffer due to sudden tech issues.

WebMail Notifier:WebMail Notifier is a Firefox reminder for freelancers who have multiple email accounts. WebMail Notifier handles Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail and other email systems. It checks your email accounts and shows you alerts when you get new messages. Thus, you can promptly reply to your business and personal emails without missing important information.

WOT:Web of trust created by WOT Firefox add-on strives to make web surfing more reliable and secure. It’s not another antivirus link scanner. WOT website ratings are built on a human approach to web safety. Install the add-on and rate websites that you use. Leave your comments when a website is tricky or your customer experience is bad. Or vice versa: vote for good websites and write testimonials. All websites are rated by people and you can read reviews before downloading, making purchases or registrations.

FireShot: FireShot is a free screen capturing add-on. It easily replaces the “Print Screen” button or any other software you use for screenshots. Just click the button and make a screenshot. Edit the screenshot, add notes, highlight objects, print, save or email the screenshot. You can export FireShot screenshots to Flick or Picasa accounts and show your draft to your freelance boss.

Rainbow Color Tools: Rainbow Color Tools is a handy add-on for freelance designers and webmasters. Click the add-on button and pick up the precise object color. Rainbow Color Tools shows you color info and copies it to the clipboard. Plus, you can save your favorite colors to the library for further access. Next time when a client asks you to make a banner with their authentic website logo color, just go to Rainbow add-on and select a perfect match.

View Source Chart:The goal of this add-on is well described in its name. View Source Chart shows code and helps you examine bugs and alerts. Along with Firebug, View Source Chart is a helpful Firefox extension for freelance developers.

SeoQuake SEO extension: SeoQuake SEO extension is a useful all-in-one toolbar for SEO freelancers. The toolbar shows Google rank, Bing index, Alexa rank and other metrics. You can analyze keyword density for a page, count external and internal links. The add-on is suitable for a quick website performance check-up.

Show My Password: Show My Password is a great app to save your time. Almost each registration has “repeat password” field. It’s easy to err when the original password is hidden by dots. So you have to retype it again and again. Show My Password makes your work more efficient and less stressful. The add-on enables you to create accounts quickly with proper password spelling.

Text to Voice: Text to Voice is an ideal add-on for freelancers who manage several tasks simultaneously. You can listen to a specification and code a web page form. You can enjoy my FreelanceSwitch posts and design a wonderful Android app interface. The voice is a bit artificial. However, it will do if you are tired of reading.

The beginning of a new year is always a good time to take stock of your business, and plan your direction for the coming year. Some freelancers work toward building up a name for themselves within a niche; others intentionally avoid focusing too much in one area.

Here’s a breakdown of the pros and cons of each approach.

You might have been a financial guru in the past, and naturally kept that route when you opened your freelance business. Or maybe you started out covering many markets, but your best client was in real estate, and you found yourself getting established in that area. However it happens, building a name for yourself as a specialist has its benefits, including:

You’ll build knowledge of the vocabulary, trends, and who’s who in the market, enabling you to jump in faster, and potentially complete jobs quicker and easier.Customers in similar markets will get wind of your work and contact you.With a specific target audience in mind, you can slant your marketing efforts and materials appropriately.You can establish yourself as an expert through speaking engagements, teaching, writing articles, or hosting a blog.Your proven track record can help you negotiate higher compensation.

But along with the good comes the bad. Reasons not to get too comfy might include:
A slump in your chosen market can send you into a dry spell.Known as a specialist in one area, you may find it difficult seeking a job out of that circle.You may become bored or experience burn out.
Remaining a generalist is a chosen path for many freelancers, and with good reason: wider options bring more opportunity.

Advantages of keeping abreast of a handful of differing markets include:
No need to panic if one of your markets goes dry; you can compensate by pursuing another area.You’ll learn new things routinely and work with a variety of people.Varying audiences will have different personalities, enabling you to use different styles and remain creative.You can avoid markets that you don’t want to work with.

And the cons:
Just like the Chinese restaurant that also serves pizza, customers might question where you excel.You may face overhead issues maintaining various versions of a resume or web site.You may become frustrated dealing with the ramp-up time of a new project, particularly if facing a tight deadline.
You learned in kindergarten that no two snowflakes are alike, and the same holds true with freelancers. While my friend was worried that she’d unintentionally settled into a niche in 2011, another freelancer might consider that an accomplishment. It’s all what makes you comfortable, what keeps things interesting for you, and ultimately, what pays the bills.

Which approach has brought you success as a freelancer? And which do you plan to pursue in 2012?
Illustration credit: Some rights reserved by patrimonio. View the original article here

Thursday, December 29, 2011

Article was created by Daniel Smith:Dan is an online marketing nomad. Specializing in social media and content creation. He consults remotely while travelling the world and living out of a backpack. Article posted on: http://www.1stwebdesigner.com/design/ways-efficient-freelancer/

Working as a freelancer has many benefits, you work your own hours, you don’t have to worry about a nagging boss, you can work in your underwear.. the list goes on. One area of freelancing that’s tough though is maintaining efficiency.

As a freelancer, you become your own task master. This means you’re not only responsible for making sure you complete tasks, but just as importantly you need to determine which tasks are to be performed in the first place. For people who lack motivation and/or self-discipline, this can present a big problem. Combined with the numerous distractions a freelancer faces e.g. family/friends, favorite TV shows, temptation to sleep til lunch; you have a formula for incredible inefficiency. In this article we’ll look at the benefits of being more efficient and then some road tested ways of dramatically improving your efficiency.

Good reasons for being more efficient

Image source: somewhere
Establishing motivation is an important first step for any process. So before we delve into ‘how’ to become more efficient as a freelancer, lets look at ‘why’ you should become more efficient.
Take the fear out of deadlines: No doubt you’ve gained a few gray hairs and pulled numerous all-nighter’s in the process of meeting deadlines. Building efficiency will help better utilize time, meaning you can maintain your healthy head of hair and significantly reduce your red bull/coffee intake.
More profitable client base: Improving your efficiency will help make your client base more profitable in two ways. Firstly, you’ll learn to focus more time and energy into the clients that provide most value to you. Secondly, by shifting your attention to higher value clients you’ll create more time to take on more of the work that delivers higher value, and stop wasting it on clients who demand a lot and return little.
Stress reduction: As you become more efficient at what you do, you’ll feel more empowered with what you’re doing, and consequently your stress levels will drop considerably.
More time for the good stuff: You started out freelancing with dreams of being able to spend more time with your family/friends and enjoying your favourite activities right? Then your days got crammed with a million and one tasks and you don’t even know what you’re doing. Building efficiency will help get you back on track to finding your original dream.
Happier you, happier clients: As you take control of your days and start feeling a genuine sense of progress your overall happiness and satisfaction will lift immeasurably. A spin-off effect of this is that your creativity and work quality will also improve, which will lead to much happier clients.
Sound good? Of course it does. So the big question, how to do it?

1. Have goals

Photo by LarryLens
Goals are essential for staying motivated. They’ll give you a reason to get out of bed in the morning (and not the afternoon), and they’ll help guide you in setting tasks for yourself. So what goals should you set? There are two main kinds, financial and lifestyle. A lot of people put financial first, however if happiness and satisfaction are important to you, I’d recommend starting with lifestyle. Think about what you want your lifestyle to include: how much free time you’ll have, the material items you’ll have, when you want to retire etc. Once you’ve got that figured out, figure out what you’ll need to achieve on the financial side to meet your lifestyle goals.

2. Scheduling

Effective scheduling is critical for freelancers to maintain efficiency. Even if you entered the freelancing field to getaway from the day-to-day grind and routine of employed work, don’t feel like scheduling is the enemy. By allotting specific amounts of time to certain tasks each day, you’ll find that you complete them much more efficiently than if you were to cruise through the day completing tasks ad hoc.

3. To-do list

Photo by Mattox
A technique which I find works particularly well and know has worked well for many others is creating a list of to-do list the night before. Before you go to bed, list down the six most important things you need to do the next day and order them by importance. This will get your mind working sub-consciously the night before and you’ll be focused as soon as you wake up. Get to work on the first item on your list and stick with it until it’s completed or until you can’t work on it anymore, only then move on to the next item. Don’t stress if you don’t get all six done, because if you can’t complete them following this method you wouldn’t have been able to in any other way. Completing tasks this way will allow you to focus on one thing at a time which is much more powerful than trying to multi-task.

4. Take yourself seriously

Just because you have the opportunity to work in your pj’s with a bowl of fruit loops in front of you doesn’t mean your job is any less important than one which requires you to suit up and eat sushi at lunch. By taking the mindset that your role is somehow less important than others you’ll only sabotage your own productivity and be more inclined to procrastinate, hence reducing efficiency.

5. Refresh

Take some timeout, both long and short:

Short breaks – Utilizing short breaks hourly will not only help you stay fresh and motivated, it can have considerable health benefits.

Long breaks – While you might feel like you need to be on the ball every day of the week, most people find they get more out of a 5 or 6 day working week with a rest day to help rejuvenate in between.

Vacations – Organizing a getaway for a week or so every few months is not only a great way to recharge your batteries, it will help inspire new ideas.

6. How have other people done it?

There’s a strong chance that someone has already blazed the trail you’re following. Look at how people in a similar role to yours have done things and learn from them. It’s not copying and it’s not being unoriginal – it’s being smart. If you can learn from the mistakes that other people have made then it saves you the time and cost of making them yourself.

7. Pareto’s law – 80% of success from 20% of effort

A trap many freelancers fall into is spending a bunch of time on tasks that deliver no value to them. These time drainers can come in many forms: marketing efforts, crappy clients who pay little and demand too much, doing things yourself that would be better outsourced. The key is identifying the tasks that deliver most value to you and focusing on these. The time wasters can be hard to let go of (it’s a bit like throwing away junk from the cupboard) but you’ll be much happier once you do, and have more time to focus on the things that deliver value, monetarily and in satisfaction.

8. Analyze how you spend a day

Dedicate a day where every 15 minutes you write down what you’re doing. It might sound like a real pain in the butt, but it can be quite amazing (and disturbing) to see how much time you waste on trivial tasks and procrastination. Performing an honest evaluation of how you spend your time will allow you to cut out a lot of the things that are wasting your time.

9. Consider power naps

Many people associate napping during the day with laziness – however a short power nap during the day can have amazing positive effects on your productivity. By using the correct power napping techniques you’ll gain a lot more than you would from pounding coffees and red bulls all day.

10. Quit WOW

If World of Warcraft or some other time killer like Farmville is taking precedence over servicing your valuable clients, then maybe it’s time to make a clean-cut. Put it in perspective and make the decision.

Conclusion

These tips aren’t hard and fast. Everyone is different and will require a different system to achieve maximum efficiency. The best thing you can do is to commit to testing out these techniques consistently over the next few weeks and seeing how they work for you. The key is to take note of results and be honest with yourself about what is and isn’t working. If you can do this you’ll be able to come up with a customized system that will have you delivering maniac levels of productivity in no time.
How have you increased your efficiency as a freelancer?

Sunday, August 7, 2011

Conceptboard is another great web app for online teamwork and collaboration.Among many features, you can draw directly on a board for your team to see, drag files directly on to your concept boards, write over your documents, leave comments easily for others to see, invite colleagues and clients to participate and even work on it using your iPad. The free account gives you a lot of options and is worth a look.

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Faysal Hasan is a IT System Engineer has with a passion for security. He worked in information technology service delivery for more than 10 years. He received his Bachelor in IT from Southern Cross University, Australia and has earned numerous technical certifications throughout his career including Microsoft Certified Solutions Expert (MCSE), CCNA Cyber Security and ITIL etc.